What We Don’t Get About Memes. Yet.
Memes drive entire social movements. It’s time to catch up.
As a professional songwriter, I have to have an ear for hooks. One producer I worked with wrote the number one hit song “Na Na Hey Hey.” Written in 1969, it’s still chanted in the stands at stadium games to this day. That’s a hook. It’s also a meme.
In the world of memes, what goes in one one ear doesn’t just go out the other. It catches the tongue. It’s respoken, sung, even chanted – often for decades. A well-designed meme spreads to the lips of hundreds, thousands, even millions of people.
Memes are not just songs or ad slogans. Memes drive social and political movements. The meme might be a clever quip passed around a town breakfast joint or it might be a chant that energizes thousands at a rally. “We Shall Overcome” is a meme. “Stop the Steal” is a meme. Feminazi, snowflake, libtard – all catchy memes.
What follows is a section on memes from High Roads’ Roadmap to Enemymaker Systems.* High Roads has been tracking and collecting the failure factors that create and sustain Enemymaker systems. These factors are often conveyed in short memes. Enemymaker systems are societies that depend on their hatred of a common enemy to create social unity. The justifications for hatred need to be conveyed quickly and simply so the people can repeat them to each other. Memes hold Enemymaker systems together. They can just as easily hold peace systems together.
*Paid subscribers will soon have an opportunity to see this Roadmap.
Memes
Civilizations have always been built on words, images, and ideas. Large groups get key ideas to spread by inventing short, simple phrases anyone can remember and repeat to others right away. Biologists and linguists call these short idea carriers memes. A good meme spreads contagiously, like a virus. A meme’s infection power, its viral R-number, is easy to assess during a street march. Someone starts chanting a few words. If it’s a good meme, the whole crowd is chanting it by the eighth round or sooner. If it’s not a good meme, it doesn’t spread. It dies.
Putting the Internet aside for a minute, what makes a meme spreadable? In order to pass from person to person, a word meme needs to meet four basic requirements:
It must be short and simple enough to remember on first listen.
It must be easy to retransmit to others (respeak, copy, share, retweet)
It must have social value and meaning.
It must reward the sender and the receiver socially when it’s transmitted.
There are two kinds of memes, audio and visual.
AUDIO MEMES: Heard and respoken.
Catchphrases/slogans: Fake news. Black Lives Matter. Stop the steal.
Rules of thumb: “An eye for an eye.” “Measure twice, cut once.”
Rhymes: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
Nicknames: Attach a trait to a name. “Crooked Hillary. Lyin’ Ted. Sleepy Joe.”
Crowd chants: Lock her up. Build the wall. No Justice, No Peace. Seig Heil.
Song hooks: We Will, We Will Rock You.
Short jokes, gags Feminazi. Snowflake. Libtard.
VISUAL MEMES: Printed or viewed.
Printed words laid over graphics: Internet memes. War posters. Political cartoons.
Wearable memes: Logos on clothing. Swastika armbands. Hairstyles. MAGA hats.
Gestures / in-group greetings: The two-finger peace sign. The stiff-arm Nazi salute.
Of these two types, audio (spoken) memes are the ones that drive movements. Audio memes are the original copy-and-paste technology humans have used for millennia. The ear copies to memory; then the lips paste to more ears. An effective meme sticks just about anywhere you throw it. It copies perfectly every time. Hearsay and gossip introduce noise to a story. The words change and mutate. Not so for memes. “Stop the Steal” doesn’t morph into “Votes got stolen.” The words stay the same.
A meme that spreads fast feels true because so many are saying it overnight. This doesn’t mean it’s true. It just means it’s meme-ish. It’s easy to remember and repeat to others. Memes are shorthand for lengthier ideas you can unpack. For instance, a four-word anti-communist meme from the late Fifties, “Better dead than red,” not only meant “I would rather be dead than Red.” It also implied that “Anyone who’s Red should be dead.” “Dead” said “killed, shot" without saying it. The old biblical phrase, “An eye for an eye,” has justified 2400 years of tit for tat retaliation.1 Both memes offer compact reasons why certain kinds of people deserve violence.
Crowd chants prove that a human herd is aligned and motivated. Nursery rhyme simplicity helps. Three-syllable chants like “U-S-A” or “Stop the steal” have a primitive beat anyone can fall in with. Less than half a dozen memes put Donald Trump in office. “Make America Great Again” was his master meme, but his “Lock her up” chant was the lethal one. It added a mob demand to the “Crooked Hillary” nickname he’d already stuck on his opponent’s back. The one-syllable verb “LOCK” put Clinton behind bars in people’s minds and demanded punitive action. With just two memes, Hillary Clinton was framed as a criminal in many voters’ minds.
Three-syllable chants have a primal impact on mob brains, especially when they begin with a strong verb. The American right uses the rhythm repeatedly. BUILD the wall. LOCK her up. STOP the steal. HANG Mike Pence. In comparison, chants from Democrats are needlessly verbose. Of 25 chants from a 2016 anti-Trump rally 2, only one, “Love Trumps Hate,” had three syllables. It had no active verb, so it came off like an academic observation. What verb were we supposed to act on?
The power of audio (spoken) memes explains why conservative America’s medium of choice has been Talk Radio. Not only does a call-in radio show have the friend-in-the-ear intimacy of conversation. A talk show host can inject a meme like “feminazi” into millions of ears at once. Listeners who barely read or write can still hear and repeat the meme to get a laugh from friends. Once a well-crafted meme catches in the ear, it quickly finds its way to people’s lips and spreads like a virus. Often for laughs.
Here’s what we really don’t understand about memes today. For social media users, the word meme refers to a picture with some clever words written over it. They may be easy to click on and share with followers, but they’re far weaker at movement-building than spoken memes are.
First, they’re not heard, so they don’t wind up on people’s lips.
Second, they need their companion picture to make sense. At best, they’re gag cartoons that make the already-converted laugh.
Third, a visual meme can’t be chanted by a crowd.
Fourth, they can’t be a passkey you repeat aloud to your group as a signal that your beliefs and attitudes match theirs.
There is one genre where visual Internet memes do old-school damage: war posters. Propaganda posters mock and dehumanize the enemy, associating them with things we already fear, hate, or feel disgusted toward.3 Put a Hitler mustache on a President’s photograph and the brain instantly associates him with an evil dictator. Associate ghetto Jews with swarming rats, as Nazi propagandists did in 19404, and people will see Jews as a filthy pestilence. Today, social media can spread war-poster-like visual memes fast. Many are cruel and the jokes are far from funny.
Single-sentence stories can also be memes. The authors of the Q-Anon conspiracy chose a core story guaranteed to outrage millions. Headline: “Satanic Democrat pedophiles abduct babies for their blood.” People horrified by this felt they had to warn others. Women marched with signs that said, “Save the Children.” “But wait,” some said. “What if this story is made up?” Distressed QAnoners responded, “When it comes to our kids, we can’t take the chance.” It’s better to be nine times wrong and one time right. We must warn everyone.
Save the Children panics existed long before QAnon. In 1990, rumors erupted about child molestation at a daycare center in Edenton, North Carolina. Distraught mothers feared that their children were being abused in Satanic rituals.5 Tabloids pounced on the story. The court ordeal dragged on for seven years before the stories were finally debunked.
Moral panics begin with a highly distressing story and a marked villain – a ghastly crime that’s easy to imagine but hard to prove. This torments people’s minds. Ever since murder mysteries were first published in the early 1800s, people have strung together clues to solve crimes. QAnon’s designers gamed this addiction by describing a horrifying crime against children, naming the villain, then trickling out puzzling clues on Twitter, which made followers into heroes (or at least a townspeople with pitchforks chasing Frankenstein). Dozens of online groups popped up where Q fans could discuss what the latest cryptic clues meant. Driven by their heroic “Save the Children” distress and a rage to punish deep-state villains, amateur investigators spent thousands of hours discussing clues and digging for evidence online.
QAnon was designed to be highly participatory. It succeeded wildly. A rallying meme created unity: “Where we go one we go all” (WWGOWGA) tagged QAnon-ers as a special family of avengers. That meme was lifted from The Three Musketeers (1844), “All for one and one for all.” Successful memes don’t die. They get recycled 175 years later.
Neuroscientists haven’t cracked how the human brain processes memes yet. We don’t know why some memes stick easily while others don’t. We only know that infectious word memes are key struts that hold a social movement together. A successful meme’s everywhere-ness aligns its speakers as a family with a worldview. It can come from anywhere, even from a sci-fi movie.
Red pill vs Blue Pill (The Matrix, 1999) is standard shorthand for conspiracy theorists who claim to know the red pill truth and scoff at blue-pillers who they insist live in a fantasy. The RPBP meme design is perfect. You have two choices – uncomfortable reality or comfortable illusion. Choose one or the other.
We know by now that two-sided choices are a key linchpin for Enemymaker systems. The Red Pill vs Blue Pill meme makes your reality truer than mine. You can add accessory terms for my delusion: duped, hoodwinked, deceived, bamboozled, conned, hoaxed. But despite your supposed realism, everything you see is still untrustworthy since you can’t exactly prove your conspiracy. Still, you know there’s definitely a plot because all the Red-Pillers in your posse believe it. So that proves it exists. Kind of.
Now what you believe is a matter of social inclusion or rejection. The authorities you now answer to are those who believe the conspiracy. Why? Because you’re no Blue-Piller. You’re not one of the duped. You shut your ears to any facts that Red Pillers might think are fake, deluded, or naive. You don’t seek out other sources that might refute group consensus. It’s too socially uncomfortable. You need your likes. In your group, there’s a war going on between truth and delusion. Anyone who doesn’t take the red pill is aiding and abetting the enemy. Deceived.
All this corrosive distrust, all this us-them-ism pivots on a meme with four words and two colors: Red Pill Blue Pill. Does this red/blue meme also influence how realistic red state Americans think they are? Is this why talk radio hosts chide their audiences not to be duped by the deep state and fake news? The people to answer that question are neuroscientists and social psychologists.
Memes that drive movements are like the sponsor patches on a race car or driver’s jacket. They are sponsors of one’s identity. I am who I am and I belong because I can recite the memes of my tribe. And effective populist leader doesn’t talk policy at a his rallies. He strings together a line of memes and trigger words that the crowd can respond to. Donald Trump found out years ago that if he talks about issues or policy, people walk out. “Oh, now he’s sounding like the rest of them.” Trump conducts his rallies like a rock concert, playing the chart hits of the moment, and leaving time for the audience to hear, feel, and respond. With few issues of his own if any, Trump is the ultimate cover band. Populist audiences want the hits. They come to feel and express, not to think. Memes and chants satisfy those needs. I am strong because we are strong because he is strong.
Viral marketing changed the Internet. From 2006 to 2015, social media sites became hothouses for inventing memes, designing viral content, and testing clickbait. Meme factories and bot farms sprang up from Singapore to St.Petersberg. Database marketing and ad targeting algorithms kept improving. Today, savvy social media marketers can test-market dozens of ads to find the most viral versions. When they find a target group of “persuadables,” they can serve them a super-tested meme to get predictable behavior. Algorithms and targeting tools used to create door-crushers for Walmart and Amazon can also help engineer door-crushers like the January 6th U.S. Capitol insurrection.
It’s not stretching a metaphor to say that Enemymaker memes act like disease pathogens. Memes can infect and disrupt democratic societies the same way viruses disrupt an organism. Just as viruses target specific bodily organs, various memes can target areas in the social brain that moderate our need to belong, our fear of being left behind, or how we think other people see us. This has always been the case, but with social media (primarily Twitter) amplifying soundbites and out-of-context video clips, the whole process is in hyper-drive.
Can memes be used to inspire high-road cooperation, teamwork that doesn’t aim to defeat other humans? Of course. In the early 1960s, memes like “We Shall Overcome” helped keep hope alive at non-violent civil rights protests. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech assured millions that equal rights laws were within reach. Memes can lift people up. If respoken by millions, memes have moral weight.
Memes can be used to build peace systems just as easily as they support Enemymaker systems. The better we understand how memes work, the better we can weaken Enemymaker memes6 that unravel democracies. Science now has tools that can help us learn which memes hold up a system. Which are the pillars, beams, struts, and braces of a system? What memes do they use to tag and interact with each other? There are dozens of windows we can look through to answer these questions, starting with social psychology, neuroscience, cognitive linguistics, and media studies.
We haven't gotten memes yet, but we can get there.
See footnote7 "Meditation, Semantics, and Memeplexes” to see how the difference between thoughts, words, and deeds applies to memes.
A counter-meme, attributed to Gandhi, piggybacks on this meme and says, “An eye for an eye just makes the world blind.”
Anderson, L.V. (Nov 13, 2016) All the Chants I Heard at Saturday’s Anti-Trump Protest in NYC, Ranked Slate magazine https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/11/all-the-chants-i-heard-at-saturdays-anti-trump-protest-in-nyc-ranked.html
Sam Keen Faces of the Enemy (1986, 2004) San Francisco: Harper Collins. One of the best and earliest books on visual war propaganda. Keen collects many examples of war iconography and explains how propaganda works on the human psyche and the masses. Keen’s book was an early influence on the Open Enemymaker Project. Keen also made a film titled “Faces of the Enemy” for PBS in 1989, now redistributed here and rentable here.
Der Ewige Jude (Eternal Jew) (1940) Directed by Fritz Hippler. An anti-Semitic propaganda film produced in 1940s Nazi Germany explores Jewish practices as viewed through the eyes of wartime Germany, presenting them as evil, corrupt, and intent on world domination.
The moral panic in Edenton, SC around daycare pedophilia is well documented in three Frontline (PBS) films about the case: "Innocence Lost" (1991); "Innocence Lost: The Verdict "(1993); and "Innocence Lost: The Plea" (1997). It is a plausible theory that this panic provided a marketing proof of concept for QAnon’s game designers.
Enemymaker memes are messages (words, images, stories, etc) that justify group fear and hostility toward a common enemy, feeding and escalating their collective desire to defeat an out-group through violence.
Meditation, Semantics, and Memeplexes:
Enemymaker memes are information viruses. They’re easily transmissible not only because they use easy-to-remember words, but because those words also link to strong meanings.
People with serious meditation practices know that the silent, non-talking mind thinks by using not only words, but lighting up the broader concepts we connect to those words – what linguists call semantic structures. Semantic structures link single words to a wider network of already existing meanings. A“trigger” word has meaning because it is stored with a positive or negative good/bad value. This links the word to other words with similar positive or negative values. When meditators sit still for 30 minutes, they soon notice the mind leap from association to association. Stilling the mind is the process of not responding emotionally to every feeling, not wanting to fix a thought because its unpleasant.
We react emotionally to a trigger word because it represents a threat, an opportunity, and so on. When people respond to words like commie or freedom, it’s because the sound of the word is already stored with values, beliefs, and ready-to-fire emotions. The brain quickly reacts: “That’s a threat, I feel afraid. That’s an opportunity, I feel elated. That’s a loss, I feel sad. That’s humiliating, I feel angry.”
More basically, meditators understand the difference between thinking, saying, and doing. A thought is not a deed. Nonetheless, many people of faith think if they merely think a thought, they’ve sinned. They may as well have acted on that thought.
The Prayer of Repentance in traditional Christian communion service says:
“Almighty God…we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we…have committed, by thought, word, and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.”
This prayer implies that anything you think is as bad as anything you say or do, even though no physical harm has been done. If I think about murdering my boss, I’ve halfway done it. I haven’t stolen four cookies, but I’ve stolen one. I’m a thief. The thought entered my brain. I let it in. Maybe Satan pushed it in. God heard me think it. If I don’t suppress the thought somehow, I’ll be tempted to kill. Because I’m already a murderer.
If you can sin with your thoughts, as the Prayer of Repentance says, then the only way to avoid sin and not offend God is to never have a bad thought. This impossible task makes the faithful who fail at suppressing “bad thoughts” incredibly distressed. They keep trying to suppress the bad thought, and it keeeps coming back. It’s impossible.
Serious meditators are familiar with “monkey-mind.” They know that the mind is a random thought generator and that “bad” thoughts happen by every few minutes. If you stay calm, that thought passes and will be replaced by another thought. But the Prayer of Repentance says you can sin with your thoughts. The only way to avoid sin and not offend God is to never have a bad thought. This impossible task makes the faithful who fail at suppressing bas thoughts incredibly distressed. They stiffen up and keep trying to suppress the bad thought. It’s impossible. Meditators also know that trying to suppress a bad thought only makes you think it more. Every time it comes back you get more upset. This is how suppression can sometimes lead to obsession.
Thoughts are just thoughts. They’re not words and they aren’t actions. If we don’t judge them and we don’t obsess about holding them down, they pass. This is the basic Buddhist precept of non-suppression. Let the mind do what it does and watch it impassively. Don’t try to fix it. Don’t talk about it. Don’t act on it. Just sit there in stillness and let it pass. The mind will wander to another thought. That’s its way.
Memes and trigger words enter our semantic brain through the ear. They could just stay in the mind, but because it benefits us socially to say them and they retransmit so easily, we repeat them to other people. And so they spread like viruses, unchanged, intact.
Many memes can be beneficial or fun, but not Enemymaker memes. Enemymaker memes are bad code, viral malware meant to trigger negatively charged, distressful feelings like resentment, loss, humiliation, terror, rage, disgust, vengeance, and hostility. Memes make it easy for everyone in a large group to feel like family because they all share the same words. In-group memes are like passwords. They’re signals of affinity and they help justify our actions and attitudes as a group. What we say and do is right because we all say and do it.
Memes can be woven together into a memeplex, a mesh of memes that interlock like Legos to construct a self-consistent social reality. The mix of memes can range from jokes and petty gossip, to proverbs and propaganda. Chants are no exception. A few interlocking memes drove insurgents through the doors of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. “Stop the steal > Fight for Trump > Hang Mike Pence > 1776,” all of them three-syllable memes - the one-two-three rhythm with action verbs loaded up front. On the fourth beat, they took a breath.
Memeplexes stitch together a quilt of reality that feels internally consistent. One meme might draw on the moral universe of heroes, victims, and villains. A few might dehumanize the common enemy using gross traits or disgusting images. Others might justify harmful action against the common enemy. Working together, Enemymaker memes sketch all the features of an external or internal threat, a threat that endangers the very existence of the group – the Enemy. Enemymaker memes portray a group under siege and help the besieged and persecuted project their aggression at the enemy.
A memeplex holds an Enemymaker system together because the people within the system circulate the entire set of Enemymaker memes amongst each other. The very nature of an Enemymaker system is to divide and stretch the parties involved in two opposite directions – outward to the extremes, away from the middle, away from moderation and peaceful disagreement. Enemymaker memes fortify the escalation of hostility. They end run all discourse by using vernacular and colloquial language to explain a social problem in simple binary terms so that everyone can know who to blame and join the struggle.